DRAFT Malahide Historic Core ACA Statement of Character

MALAHIDE ARCHITECTURAL CONSERVATION AREA JUNE 2009
DRAFT STATEMENT OF CHARACTER
farm near Malahide at The Grange and Broomfield West. In 1170 MacTorkill surrendered
to the Normans and was permitted to retire to Malahide. He rebelled the following year
and was executed and his lands were granted by Henry II to a Norman knight Sir
Richard Talbot, with the usual feudal privileges, as a reward for his “war like services”
in the conquest of Ireland.
Sir Richard Talbot built a motte and bailey castle and circa 1250 AD he built the first
stone castle in Malahide. The estate was passed down through the male heirs of Sir
Richard Talbot for over the next eight centuries and the castle was rebuilt, extended
and remodelled during the successive generations. During the 1650s, the family’s
estates were sequestered and granted to Cromwellian soldiers and adventurers.
However the family recovered their lands in the subsequent decades. Notably the
Talbot’s land holdings were not confiscated after The Battle of the Boyne in 1690
although they supported the Jacobite side. When Lord Talbot de Malahide died in 1973
the castle and estate were put up for sale and purchased by Dublin County Council.
3.2 17th and 18th Century Malahide
The population in the town appears to have grown from approximately 100 to 200
people in the 17 th century. The court and its offices were stone built with slate roofs
and all the houses were thatched with mud walls. The town’s water supply, which was
also a venerated holy well, known as St Sylvester’s Well was located at the centre of
the square at the intersection between Old Street and Railway Avenue. The one inn in
the town was described as “a poor ordinary place”. Malahide’s safe harbour led the
town to be known as one of the chief haven towns in Ireland. Malahide was also one of
only three settlements in North Dublin to achieve borough status in the 17 th century,
the other settlements being Lusk and Swords.
An unflattering account of the town given by John Dunton in 1699, an English
bookseller records
“It contains 30 ordinary huts in all, and not one without several little children who are
sprawling about the fireplace (for there was but small appearance of a fire on it) like
so many maggot’s on a dunghill in a summer’s day”
Malahide developed around the castle and the Talbot family strongly influenced its
development. In the 17th century there were two main areas of settlement within the
area, Malahide Castle and one mile to the north, Malahide town.
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